Nino Burjanadze: We should force the government to hold fair elections.

00:32 / 21.10.2017

In her comment following the conclusion of the ‘Council of
Leaders’, where leaders of 14 oppositional parties met with
diplomatic corps, Nino Burjanadze stated: “’Council of Leaders’
made collective judgment that our unitary position is that
pre-electoral environment was certainly unfair, unequal and tense,
as there were numerous incidents of harassment, not even mentioning
the massive utilisation of administrative resources.”
As Burjanadze noted, “the unity of ‘Council of Leaders’ is vital.
Everyone knows rather well how important is a vote of a single
citizen, as the difference in support of first four candidates is
very narrow. It is an utter nonsense that the turnout does not
matter as the outcome is already decided. If the electorate is
active, then it will be possible to achieve the result which will
be completely opposite to government predictions.

At the ‘Council of Leaders’ we asked the representatives of the
diplomatic corps to avoid issuing statements, such as the one by
the United States ambassador, which completely differs from the
position of all political parties, par the ‘Georgian Dream’. It is
very important that we force the government to hold more or less
normal and fair elections, as achieving ideal one is impossible due
to the fact that the election day is not the sole component of
elections. Despite all this, the government still has an ability to
normalise the process. I do not expect this from them, but provided
the electorate is active, it is still possible that elections do
not lose their significance in this country.